I ran into a year-old article over the weekend that says that some healthcare investors believe that 98% of the healthcare startups are zombies right now (as in last year). I don’t believe it is true (neither does the author of the article, I think), but I agree that Healthcare IT innovation is not easy. In fact, there are many possible land mines that Healthcare IT companies, not just startups, need to pay close attention to. In this post, I would like to point out a few of those. Although these problems seem very generic, different variations or combinations of them could be the real reasons of many failed or struggling Healthcare IT companies.
Lack of Know-how in one of the three Domains:
Successful Healthcare IT innovation requires the know-how in three important and intersecting domains – business, industry and technology. There are a lot of companies that are strong in two of these three domains, but not all three. Mastering the Venn diagram intersection of these three is not only a mantra for success but also a necessity for survival. The only way to get to this is think like customers’ business execs, collaborate with customers relentlessly and leverage cutting-edge technology.
Lack of Strong Product Leadership:
Product leadership isn’t about building gigantic products that aim to solve every little problem customers face. It’s about continuously delivering business value to customers, starting with the maximum impact solution, minimally-sized. Aiming too high too early in ever-changing Healthcare industry will only result in too-much clutter, dangling features, and waste. Finally, understanding the market segments – there are many ways to look at the market and each have different pain points – and positioning the solutions rightly is extremely critical for Product leadership. To sum it up, ‘build the right solutions for right market segments with must-have features while adding on your own differentiation features, but get there incrementally.’
War of Product Management and Engineering worlds:
Product Management and Engineering are the two ends of ‘innovation seesaw.’ If one of these has more power in a healthcare IT organization, it’s almost guaranteed to result in long-term friction. Engineering needs to ‘listen in’ to Product inputs and business requirements of the customers. Product needs to remind themselves that innovation takes time and be clever in prioritization and about go-to-market decisions. Tensions or disharmony between Product Management and Engineering could be in different flavors.
Non-agile Agile:
Practicing Agile in the right way is an art; it’s not easy. I have seen many struggle. Getting better at Agile takes time. It took me a while as well. Teams and companies need to be patient. However, in the long run, it’s extremely important to remember the basics of incremental innovation right. Agile on the paper will not make the cut. If your organization is not ready or not good at Agile, take help or continue the previous development methodology in the interim, but in shorter cycles.
Data Inaccuracies and Poor-Quality Data:
We all know that the single biggest problem for many Healthcare IT companies is dealing with rigid data stuck in legacy systems. One thing teams and leadership need to aim, especially in Population Health Management, is to use ‘just-in-time’, as little and ‘standard’ data’ as possible, supremely high quality, and rigorously tested and refined data. Quality, not the quantity is to aim for.
Analysis Paralysis:
There are always tons of ‘related facts’ to any problem we solve. However, bringing all those facts to over-synthesize the issue at hand will not enable us to move faster. It will surely result in supreme delays or a handful of ‘congestion points’ and ‘weak downstream features’ or loads of ‘technical debt’ that needs to be cleaned-up later. ‘Just-enough’ analysis is to be asked for and done to deliver features at hand.
Over-engineering or Under-engineering:
This is like aiming to build a home laptop with 1 TB RAM or build a hospital-bed that can fly. Probably bad analogies, but I really see some products that are so over-engineered that it baffles me. Two of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – ‘Begin with End in Mind’ (the habit of Vision) and ‘Put First Things First’ (the habit of attacking the most important first) – make so much sense here. The other end of the spectrum in under-engineering. Not understanding the complexities of some aspects or making incorrect assumptions will bite us downstream. Always ask ourselves – are we oversimplifying the problem? How does the industry and competitors see this problem and handle it?
Fee-for-Service Design:
This is very Healthcare industry specific and about reiterating one of the three important domains I mentioned above. We are in a world of Affordable Care Act and Value focus. And, things are evolving, and could take any turn any day. If we design modern Healthcare Analytics software with yester-year workflows or Fee-for-service know-how or rudimentary understanding of the Value journey in which Payers and Provider are merging / colliding and walking the path together, our solutions will not enable success to our customers and in the end we will not succeed either. Keeping up with the regulatory changes, industry dynamics and competitive landscape is a must-have!